Yes, Virginia, New York City lacks self-awareness on guns

Now, if you live in a building with doormen and have your own private security, New York City is a wonderful place. Ask Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has both private and police armed protection, even when he leaves the country, and his fellow elites whom he allows to have guns… about 50,000 in all. The same sort of holier-than-thou mindset permeates the editorial board of the New York Times (which has concealed carriers in the publisher’s family), who issued forth an unsigned editorial today, excoriating those any states that don’t deprive their citizens of their constitutional right to bear arms.

With Washington’s failure to impose needed background checks on gun sales — even after the slaughter of children in Newtown, Conn. — the states will have to lead the change. But, so far, only a few states — including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New York — have acted this year to stanch the flood of illegal guns.

Other states, like Virginia, are making the gun trafficking even worse. More than 320 of the guns recovered in New York City in 2011 came from that state, which requires no background checks for private gun sales. Virginia’s lawmakers compounded the problem last year when they revoked their “one-gun-a-month” limit. With no background check and no limits, it is easy for anybody to buy guns in a parking lot, fill up the trunk and sell their wares to criminal clients in New York City — no questions asked. Illegal weapons from the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania also end up on New York streets.

The “problem” for gun grabbers in New York City is that citizens have an estimated 2 million firearms, despite the bigoted Sullivan Act that was passed to keep the well-to-do in Manhattan from feeling threatened by relatives of their household staff for the past 98 years. Why does the Sullivan Act fail so miserably? It is because New Yorkers aren’t blind. They see the world around them, and know that gun control only leaves this disarmed prey for criminals and corrupt politicians.

Hard data also supports what they acutely feel.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch—from one of the states New York City blames for their gun problem— posted an editorial earlier this month pointing out the reality that more guns does not cause more crime.

Advocates of gun control are not so lucky. In recent years sales of guns and ammo have gone through the roof. According to standard liberal doctrine, this should have led to an orgy of bloodshed.

It hasn’t. In fact, precisely the opposite has occurred. More guns have been followed by less gun crime. As a Sunday Times-Dispatch news article reported, “total firearm sales in Virginia have risen a staggering 101 percent from 2006 to 2012, while gun-related crime has dropped 28 percent during that period.”

This does not mean the added guns caused the reduction in crime. It does mean, however, that the liberal claim that more guns leads to more crime is wrong.

The same holds true across the nation. Where citizens have the liberty to defend themselves, gun ownership is up, and crime is down. That is’t a fluke, but part of a well established and long-running trend. Violent crimes are at a more than 40-year low, while gun ownership is at an all-time high, especially among younger, female, and urban demographics.

New Yorkers know in their hearts that gun control does not work, which is why so many are choosing to ignore the Sullivan Act. Maybe it’s time for New York’s would-be elites to recognize that it is they who are behind the times, espousing a regressive philosophy rooted in cultural bigotry and class-hatred a century old.

Or is that sort of introspective honesty simply beyond those who imagine they rule New York?